


Prodigal Scions

by LunnarChild



Series: mr. amnesia, the antichrist, and the angelic reject [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Claire has a minor melt down, F/M, Gen, adding tags as we go, all good (angsty) things, its okay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-19 08:41:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7353880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunnarChild/pseuds/LunnarChild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing is ever forgotten. Not truly, displaced perhaps, but never forgotten. The past has a way of catching up when you least expect it. The things we solemnly leave behind stubbornly find their way back. In the end, the things they seek often has a way of returning the things lost along the way.</p><p>Claire finishes up a hunt that leaves her questioning her future, before returning to a trail of grisly murders that have now crossed several state borders. In following the trail she comes across the ghosts of Winchester’s past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prodigal Scions

The hunt ended in a blaze of fire with the stench of burning corpses permeating the air. It was an unpleasant scent and it caught on the back of the throat leaving a shuddering ashy aftertaste to the air; like Claire had the personal pleasure to swallow the contents of someone else’s ash-tray. The blond haired woman tried to put the image of roasting bodies out her head as she limped back to her truck.

Claire Novak makes it back, throwing her injured leg every third and fourth step, to her red piece-of-crap truck. She drags the shotgun through the mud with her free (i.e. uninjured) arm and hunched shoulders. Most girls did the walk of shame on their way back home at three in the morning, then again, she wasn’t most girls. Claire was so tired that she couldn’t even give a damn at this point. It’s night, and though she has gained excellent hunter-night vision over the past couple of years, it was still too fucking dark as she stumbles over old growth roots with nothing but the far-off light of the raging fire she left behind to guide her back to the decency of civilization.

The intense heat that scorched her back was a biting contrast to the chilly night air. Even when the raging inferno that was once the dilapidated house becomes a spec of light in the dark forest, Claire can still feel the lick of hungry flames on her back. The image of tendrils of orange and yellow light reaching for her with greedy limbs danced in her mind’s eye.

The ache between her shoulder blades tingles from an old memory.

Finally reaching the truck, she kicked open the cab door and tossed in the gun behind the seat, not bothering to properly secure it in the secret compartment. She practically hears Jody scoff at the action. In her mind’s eye, she can see the rolling of her dark brown eyes and the disbelieving cross of her arms. After the truck, the gun was the first thing she bought for Claire. When Claire finally decided that she wanted to try making it on her own, Jody did everything in her power to make sure Claire was safe. Even if “safe” meant purchasing Claire’s first gun. That and Jody was always going on about gun safety.

Most parental overseers bought cars or helped pay for the college tuition for their wards when they turn eighteen, Jody bought her guns. Two nine millimeter handguns and one double barrel shotgun, in addition to several boxes of ammo. Both Claire and Jody knew that lead rounds wouldn’t do much for many of the things that Claire would be tracking in the following months. However, Claire thought it was only supposed to give Jody a better piece of mind. And a truck, rusting at the seams, maybe, but it felt solid like a tank. A warm and pleasant feeling settled in Claire’s chest at the memory.

That or the dick of a monster threw her harder than she thought and she may or may not have a heart condition at this point. Claire opted for the memory. Something abstractly good for the crapfest that was her situation. Was her life, more like.

 _Happy thoughts_ , she repeated in her head. _Happy thoughts…_

Needless to say, it didn’t help improve her mood. Though, it did give her something to distract her. Distraction always seemed like the golden key to the city.

Emotionally and physically exhausted after this particularly grueling hunt, Claire opens her pack of cigarettes with one hand and has her thumb hover over Jody’s contact number from a disposable Walmart flip-phone. It was a stupid and childish habit. However, it helped ease the shaking in her hands. Not the actual act of smoking. She can still remember her mother’s voice telling her that if anyone ever handed her a cigarette, she should decline because it was the devil’s drug; or, something along the lines of that. Just the possession of the once taboo object was a drug in of itself.

Some people had recordings of loved ones’ unanswered voicemails. She had a couple of postcards and a fading memory.

Claire once knew this hot shot hunter a couple years ago who had something similar. Not exactly in the same context or for the same reasons, but similar all the same. He was a legacy-kid, came from a family of hunters.

It wasn’t uncommon for some poor sap to get drawn into the fight because of some mark on the family from a couple generations back. It seemed like a new found trend. More and more hunters she had met now days were legacies. Claire had forgotten what his name was but she did remember that he was decent at what he did. Had a thing for hunting werewolves, though he never told her why not that she cared one way or another. All hunters had a preference, a long-standing feud that kept them up at night and turned them all into dysfunctional sociopaths. God knows they weren’t exactly right in the head.

Given the facts, she didn’t really blame them for the way they were. Occupational hazard she supposed.

This guy stood out in her mind partially because of how _out-there_ he was. Just a few loose screws short of Winchester-sized issues. Not a term she liked to throw around without reason. Claire had met him back when she was still green and relatively wet behind the ears. Hunting out of state was different that looking after your neighborhood. She might as well been hunting in an urban jungle, stuck in a perpetual state of no-where.

He had carried around a silver bullet in the front pocket like some guys would carry around a lucky charm. An old family heirloom, the surviving unwashed cut of cloth from the blanket his parents brought him home in, the underwear of the person who took his virginity (hopefully washed). No, this guy toted around one unused silver bullet as his lucky charm. She didn’t think much of it till he popped it into his mouth like a piece of hard candy. Claire could still remember her spike of alarm.

 _"What the fuck are you doing?!”_ The sound she made was just short of a blood-curdling screech.

Claire winced at the memory.

He laughed, swishing the metal cylinder from cheek to cheek. “Chill _Chicca_ , I know what I’m doing.”

“It’s Claire and you aren’t Hispanic so don’t call me that again. Now, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Well, I was thinking about _doing you_ …”

It was a cheap and cheesy line that had Claire internally gagging at the thought.

Disturbed and still a little shaken, Claire took her frustration out on Josh – that was his name, Josh Huxley. She had forgotten how much of a pig he was. If he had followed the family plan and gone to college like he was supposed to, she could easily see him getting drunk in a frat house. Not to mention he was more than a few years older than her, which upped the creep factor. At least in her opinion; she couldn’t remember how many times she found him staring at her openly from the corner of her eye. To the day, she couldn’t figure out the expression on his face that was always present when he thought she didn’t know. Pity? Lust? Just trying to be a creep? It was unclear.

Standing within reach, Claire lifted her arms and gave him a forceful shove half expecting that he’d fall on his head. The momentum caught him off guard, sending him sprawling. She hoped it hurt from any indication. It was childish but she liked the illusion of control.

“Get real. Now seriously, what’s up with the bullet?”

“Why? Concerned I’m curious about the taste from the open end of the smoking barrel?”

It was a bad joke made in extremely poor taste. Josh was full of hot air during the short time she spent with him, always cracking one bad joke after the next. Half the time – when she even bothered to remember – she wondered why she stuck around so long, even if it was just a week. Taking just one look into his eyes, noting the dark bags that begun to form and the pale sheen of his skin, Claire couldn’t guarantee that he was just telling a joke.

She remembered how unnerving Josh had looked; gaunt and hollow. (A dark voice whispered that this was the future she had to look forward to several years down the road. Not a life time, just less than a handful. She begrudgingly remembered the Winchesters and shivered).

Hunters died one of three ways; the first is getting taken out while on the job. Going out with a blaze of glory sounded okay to an outsider, but for a hunter, it was morbidly common and cliché. The second is rare among their line of work, but some lucky bastard always manages to pull it off, is dying from old age. The third, less spoken of in the community, (if you could even call them that) is suicide. Hunters, at least the good ones, never judged any who chose to go that route. If hunters understood one thing, it was that they lived hard and difficult lives.

After all, they were only human. Humans have limits.

“Don’t worry Novak, it’s just a reminder.” _If things go south and there isn’t anyone around to finish the job_ , goes unsaid.

“Like a fucking metaphor?” she had asked in disbelief.

The look on her face must have been hilarious because Josh breaks out into laughter. It borders on hysterical and hurts her ears. “Nothing that pretty, it’s just a reminder.”

“I’m surprised that you even understood that reference.”

A couple days later Claire packed up and left without bothering to write a note. Claire learned that there were two types of hunters; the ones that build networks, and the ones that do well on their own. Claire had considered herself one of the ones who did better on their own. Fewer complications. She didn’t remember what happened after that since the drive was blissfully uneventful, but she did remember finding herself at a gas station, staring at a pack of cigarettes sitting on a shelf behind the counter with Josh’s words ringing in her ear. She bought the cheapest pack on a whim with a bottle of coke.

She hadn’t looked back since. Till now, that is.

Claire stuck the unlit cancer stick between her teeth as she fiddled with the phone. As she did so, she tried to avoid psychoanalyzing her current coping habits. That was a can of worms she had no business in opening. Especially in light of recent events.

She could feel the cold seep through her leather jacket. Leaning against the driver side of the cab, Claire bounced her right leg anxiously. It was a nervous tick that drove her insane. She was still coming off that adrenaline high and the thought of breaking hunt rules made her nervous. She wanted to call Jody, just to hear another human voice but she was still within the vicinity of the crime scene. Under normal circumstances, Claire would follow protocol; however this wasn’t under normal circumstances.

Protocol would dictate that she should leave the area immediately and put as much distance between herself and the crime scene as much as possible. She would then calmly return to her motel room without drawing attention to her person. Once her wounds were addressed she would then proceed to contact Jody and inform her of the situation. The next morning, she would check out and continue on the road until night fall.

At this point, protocol could screw itself in Claire’s opinion. She was exhausted and she wanted to hear another person’s voice, the potential consequences be damned.

The location of her truck was still far enough away from the burning house to lessen the likelihood of her involvement in the eyes of the law. She had parked the thing in a small muddy grove just off one of the back roads. At this time of night with no one for miles around, Claire should be safe enough to make a quick call. Caught in a sudden moment of indecision, she tried to focus her rampaging mind elsewhere.

In her head, she made a list of everything she needed to take care of before she could be considered decent for public viewing. Right now she looked like she had just come out of a bar fight with Freddy Cougar. Well, maybe not Freddy Cougar, more like a grizzly bear with a steel bat who liked to throw 145lb women through walls. There was a dark wet patch growing through her jeans where she might have been cut. It was still hard to tell with the excess adrenaline still in her system. The pain was a nuisance in the moment. The statement still stood that she looked like crap. It was ultimately the attention she was trying to avoid.

A guy walks out in public in the same shape she was in, he might get a few curious glances but ultimately assumes it was a duke-out between men’s throbbing egos. A woman walks around with a split lip and a gushing cut above her right eye with extensive bruising down the length of her spine and a limp, and boom; suddenly she’s a trauma victim. Talk about your double standards.

Either way, her current appearance was going to invoke more questions than she wanted to answer.

The pale blue light from the phone screen simultaneously aggravated her growing headache and burned her optic nerves. She blinked several times as she tried to dissolve the stars flooding her sight. God, she hated that. There was a dull throb in her temple as her eyes scanned the screen quickly looking through her messages; four new texts and three new voicemails, all from Jody.

For the first time in almost eleven days, the longest period of time she has gone without checking in, Claire had the sudden urge to call her back. When she had first started hunted, Jody had demanded her to check in before and after every hunt, and every couple of days between hunts. It was a rule Claire had originally followed to the dot as she was already treading on eggshells. Jody had _hated_ the idea of Claire hunting, especially alone. More than once she suggested that she should stick with Krissy’s lot for a while, get the feel for things. Claire had spent a good half of her life already “getting a feel for things” since the thing with her dad and Castiel. She wanted to _hunt_ and Claire wasn’t much of a team player.

As time went on Claire’s check-ins with Jody became spotty at best. Half remembered reminders to leave a minute-and-a-half clinical update of what was going on Jody’s voice mail. Her exchanges between her guardian and herself had become strained and clipped. Only telling her the bare essentials; “yes, I’m okay”, “I killed the monster and got a sprained ankle”, “no I do not need to see a doctor”.

Yes, even in Claire’s own opinion she sounded like a bitch to the woman who practically handed the world to her on a platter of sterling silver. She was aware. However, as the hunts got harder and Claire came back to a lonesome motel room a little more battered than usual, it was harder to listen to Jody’s concerned sigh. Its usage had grown in the past two years.

Nowadays it was hard to keep a conversation going without a clinical update of whatever job she was on or without Jody’s heavy sigh through the earpiece. But now, Claire desperately wanted to hear Jody’s voice. To hear anyone’s voice. Even Alex’s if she had been willing to talk to her.

Claire could taste the bitter end of the cigarette on her tongue. The taste made her grimace, twisting up her face. She plucked out the stick before the end got too soggy. It was one of the easier ways to lose her cigs. She only had a few left and she was running pitifully low on cash. She would either need to get a transfer from Jody (unlikely, given her own stubborn pride), work a weekend at some roadside diner, or dip into one of her illegal credit cards. Two out of three of those options sounded undesirable. But that was a problem for the morning when she had more sense about her.

After another moment of indecision, Claire flipped the phone shut with an audible snap.  It’s a gunshot in the dark to her ears, in comparison to the silent forest around her. She couldn’t tell if it was because it was night and all the critters were asleep or if they could still somehow sense the lingering presence of unnaturalness that seemed to cling to her clothes.

Without another word, Claire swung open the cab door and hauled herself inside.

The truck was a constant reminder of Jody’s generosity. It wasn’t a pretty thing; colored with an eye-striking, gaudy, red and large patches of wear, were rings of rust that ate at large peals of paint. It stuck out like a sore thumb in a crowded parking lot, which was great when she had to make supermarket runs, but more conspicuous than needed for a job. The large open bed in the back was hardly covered with a ratted brown tarp and rusting tie-downs. It was annoying because even though you could fit several bodies in the back, it was open and visible to the public which made selecting hunts tedious and limited. Which was probably Jody’s initial line of thought when she bought the damn thing; if Claire couldn’t hide a dead body in the back, she would consider it a win.

It was also an older model. So things were always needed replacing or sealed up by duct tape. The whole passenger side of the fake leather interior was stitched up by cross-sections of grimy-lined silver streaks. Despite its age and appearance, Bezy – the lovingly bestowed pet name – was hardy when it counted most. Claire had been told that the engine was in top shape. Either way, she didn’t care as long as it got her to the places she needed to go or do the things she wanted. With a mighty yank on the door handle and minor resistance, Claire slid into the driver’s side.

Her right foot radiated a numb sort of pain up her leg but as long as she could still move it, she figured she could still drive. It wasn’t like she had to call Jody in South Dakota to come pick her up. So waiting til daylight for her wounds to heal at least a little bit was out of the question. And one quick prayer to the friendliest angel she knew was also out of the question. It would only lead to more questions and drama that she had no energy to spare for.

A flick of her uninjured wrist and the great metal beast around her roared to life in a thunder. Sometimes Claire felt that driving Bezy was like driving a tank or a semi-truck instead of some little pickup.

With a low groan, she leaned over to the passenger side and rolled the window down halfway. She then did the same with the driver side. Just before she put the truck in gear to turn onto the road, Claire turned on the radio with a click and dialed into a random station. At three-thirty in the morning, her options were limited to Hispanic music and mindless radio-talk show.  Listening to the static-y noise out of the stereo wasn’t as appealing as hearing Jody’s or Alex’s voice, but it was the next best thing given the circumstance. It was a long drive back to the motel without company and she would rather not be left alone with her thoughts.

Six months ago the long drive, dark night, and empty miles of highway would have sounded a lot more appealing than the moment. Now it felt like she was trying to outrun her demons – metaphorically speaking.

The line was drawn at hunting demons and angels with a fat red sharpie. She had been down that road and knew it was nothing but a downward spiral.  Though now days Claire’s demons felt more corporeal than they should be. Only they couldn’t be killed with her heavenly sword. She started to wonder if this is why hunters liked to work in groups of two or three.

There was a lot of silence between the lonely trio of _me, myself, and I_.

Lonely was a foreign word in Claire’s vocabulary. Or rather, it was a word that was once alien. Now it was commonplace in her life. A lot of things were different from what they used to be. At the same time, things had gotten complex and simple without her even noticing it.

“ _Hunting things, killing monsters, saving the day…? Sounds great, but don’t you ever get_ lonely _?_ ” The words of a dead girl circled in her head.

It takes everything in her power not to slam on the brakes and bring the mini-freighter to a screeching halt on a desolate road. The urge to jerk the wheel on a sharp turn is nearly unbearable. She is a hair’s breadth from breaking into a million little pieces. The hunter part of her, the part she can never shut off, tells her to avoid crossroads. By whatever power that be, Claire miraculously makes it back to the motel with only a slight shake in her usually steady hands.

Once the car is in park, Claire turned off the ignition and feels whatever strength she had left leave with the sudden arrival of the quietness of the parking lot. She didn’t think there were enough cigarettes in the world to settle her current nerves. Lit or unlit.

 _Nerves_ felt like an understatement. Nerves implied that she was nervous, anxious, which she was not. The battle was an hour and a half drive down the road. The adrenaline had finally escaped her system leaving her a shaking, bruised mess. She wasn’t nervous. She was exhausted through and through. The memory of smoke and char lingered on her jacket. A reminder.

Which was sad because this was her favorite jacket. She might have to burn this one if she couldn’t get the smoke smell out of it.

Claire took a deep breath. She closed her eyes, imagining her lungs filling up with the night’s cool air like balloons. Not the most flattering image in mind but it gave her something to focus on. She didn’t have time for fancy speak and pretty words. As long it got the job done, Claire didn’t care.

Closing her eyes turned out to be a mistake.

All she sees is a pale face looking up at her in death, thick red liquid pooling around a still body. Unseeing eyes staring blankly in an almost accusatory expression burned into her memory, branded to the flesh behind her eyelids. The image startles Claire out of her pseudo-meditation.

Her body shakes as her eyes begin to water out of exhaustion and frustration; her grip tightening on the well-worn steering wheel. For the first time in almost two years, Claire wants to cry. She wants to sob because she doesn’t have the strength to scream at the darkened sky.

God, she was so _tired_.

 _Hold it together Novak_ , she tells herself. Claire pulls enough of herself together to make it out of the cab and to the motel room door. It’s a slow process. Borderline painful, only, Claire can’t be sure whether it was metaphorical or literal.        

She was thankful for the ranch-style motel. She didn’t think she had enough strength left in her to climb a flight of stairs. Claire has to remind herself to go back to Bezy halfway to her room because she had forgotten tote bag of various weapons on the floor of her unlocked truck.

Reaching room 165 she fiddled with the silver room key. Her fingers ached in their stiffness from the long drive gripping the steering wheel so tightly. The single key on its ring chimed softly from the shake in her hands. Claire can’t from what she feels so messed up. It might have been a mix of things. After two minutes of unsuccessfully getting the key into the keyhole, Claire takes both hands guides the key to its destination.

When the golden sound of the telltale click of the lock undoing itself rings out into the earlier morning, Claire can’t help the “thank god” that slips out under her breath. She walks far enough into the room to shut and bolt the door behind her. The tote bag was casually thrown in a random direction.

Claire doesn’t even get near the dubious motel bed before she can’t keep her eyes open any longer. She falls asleep on the grimy carpet flooring, her upper body propped up against the wall.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have gotten to the end of this chapter, thanks for sticking with me. I hope to have more chapters for you in the comming months. I would like to thank the amazing queengallaghr for being my beta and supporting me to get this far. 
> 
> If you have liked what you've read, leave a comment in the section below. I would love to have some feedback. Till next time.


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